Gospel Authorship with Michael Kok

Michael Kok When it comes to authorship, I know these debates get heated and apologetic versus anti-apologetic. I would just probably defend maybe three theses where I would say the gospels are formerly anonymous. The titles of the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John are secondary, so they were added by scribes. Mm. And that we can kind of look at the traditions in the second century and kind of piece together why they ascribe them to those figures. And I think those Christians in the second century were answering questions in the second century. So they're more helpful for how did they receive the gospels, and maybe not necessarily are they historically accurate to how the gospels originated.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Man, things are good. It's a million degrees right now in Salt Lake City. Yeah.

Dan McClellan I got 96 right now. It was 100 yesterday. Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, we're out here melting, but that's all right. Fortunately, we're spending today talking to a Canadian, so maybe that'll cool things down. I don't know. Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're going to aim at the first half of our two rhetorical goals for this podcast. Mm. Increasing public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion by bringing on a longtime friend of mine and a specialist in gospel authorship, Michael Coak. Welcome to the show, Michael.

Michael Kok Oh, thanks for having me. Longtime fan.

Dan McClellan Well, appreciate that very much. And we go all the way back to the aughts, back when we were bibliobloggers. Yeah.

Michael Kok 2009 was when I started that. Yeah. I had a lecturer doing the same thing, so I copied him.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that was a different world back then. But Michael is the New Testament lecturer at Morling College, Perth Campus, in lovely Australia on the western 40, where you can drive for a few days to get to the East Coast. But are there places to stop along the way, or is it pretty rough?

Michael Kok I think it's pretty rough all the way. I've never tried to drive myself. My wife had when she had to bring over a car from Sydney to Perth. Wow. Yeah. I think you just have to keep going for most of it.

Dan Beecher Just provision yourself well and- Yeah. ... watch out for kangaroos.

Michael Kok Yes, exactly.

Dan McClellan And Michael, last year you published with Fortress Press, a book entitled "Tax Collector to Gospel Writer: Patristic Traditions about the Evangelist Matthew." And you've done books on the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Mark, particularly on authorship of those. Would you mind letting the folks know a little bit about yourself and maybe what got you interested in gospel authorship? Sure.

Michael Kok Yeah, so I grew up in a Baptist home. So when I was going to do my undergrad, I was going to Bible college thinking maybe be a pastor, and then I liked what my professors were doing and thought I could do the same thing. Yeah. But in that context, it was also a Baptist college, learned the critical scholarship about who wrote the gospels, when, where, or just the New Testament in general. But in that kind of faith context where you can try and say, "What's scholarship saying, and how can I integrate that into my worldview?"

Dan McClellan If I may interrupt briefly, I was at Trinity Western University for one of my master's degrees, and there were some folks coming there from MDivs and from Bible colleges. Yep. And a big discussion was we're learning this critical scholarship, and there seems to be a giant gulf between the academy and the pews. And my understanding is that between seminaries and Bible colleges, you have a broad range of approaches to this, where sometimes they're teaching you this just so you can debunk it. Sure. Sometimes they're teaching you this, not expecting you to incorporate anything into what's being discussed in the congregations. I'm curious what your experience was, your professors, what their approach was, and how you responded to it. Yeah.

Michael Kok I thought they did pretty honest stuff. I think you probably had a range of perspectives on the faculty. So I'm teaching at a Baptist college now. I think there's one principle of the freedom of conscience. Okay. So it's kind of follow the evidence where you think it leads, but also think about how it then applies to your worldview and your- Okay ... beliefs and practices. So I know, for instance, when you talk about an issue like pseudonymity, like that were all New Testament books written by their authors, you might get some faculty would do what you said, defend the traditional authorship. But others would try to say, "Well, here's the arguments for and against, and you follow your conscience wherever you think that leads, and you make peace with that." Okay. However you'd like to do that theologically. And I think that I was just teaching a class on the Gospel of John and similar thing. I tried to give a balanced take on the authorship question, but I got lots of student papers defending those written by the Apostle John in Ephesus. And I'm like, "If they make a good argument for the position, they'll get a good grade." Yeah. So I think that was the approach I received. But that was where I did my undergrad, but my master's and PhD were more in public universities. Mm-hmm. So I went and did a master's in religious studies in my hometown And I didn't know what to... That's what got me into the second-century stuff. Because it's just hard to find new ideas where everyone talks about Paul or Mark, but if you look at the reception of a biblical book, you have 2,000 years to work with. So that's where I kind of got into- ... the second-century Christianity when they're starting to develop the traditions about the authors of the Gospels, and they're systematizing doctrines and trying to organize church government. So after that, I went and did my PhD in England at the University of Sheffield. Nice. And it was in biblical studies, but it was also public. It was established by a scholar who was independent of the Church of England. So it wasn't officially connected to the church like a lot of departments are in the UK, or at least theological programs. Right. And so with biblical studies, they were interested a lot in the cultural and political reception of the Bible. And so I took my second century and then combined it with my interest in Gospels, and that's how I ended up exploring Gospel authorship, and that's the niche I've tried to carve out. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

Dan Beecher I was deep into my adulthood before I knew that there was any controversy at all regarding the authorship of the Gospels. I just took it for granted that if the Gospel had a name on it, that's who wrote it, and it was a law. I was surprisingly old before I knew that there was any question about that whatsoever. So maybe you can set the stage with where the idea of the authorship, the attributed authorship, started and when people started to question that. Sure.

Michael Kok Yeah, I could share from my own experience. I remember trying to memorize some of the arguments in the book "Case for Christ," which came out when I was a teenager.

Dan McClellan Strobel, right?

Michael Kok Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, it was really convincing to me at that time of my life. But one of the scholars interviewed tried to say, "Well, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're not well. They're not the famous Peter or Paul, so why would the church attribute Gospels to these names?" So let's try an argument that they're reliable attributions because they're not as significant. Matthew's an apostle, but he's not one of the leading apostles. And Mark and Luke are associated with the apostles Peter and Paul. Well, the only case it doesn't work for is John, because he's one of the three main apostles in that group of 12. But yeah, I remember learning these arguments and trying to defend it, and then going to undergrad and learning the arguments for and against the traditions. I think what I would want to say is that when it comes to authorship, I know these debates get heated and apologetic versus anti-apologetic stuff online. So I think I wouldn't want to deny that eyewitnesses could have played a role in the formation of the Gospel traditions, or some of the earliest Gospels were in a generation of Jesus' life, or even that you can't make a case for some of the traditional authorship. I would just probably defend maybe three theses where I would say the Gospels are formerly anonymous. The titles of the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John are secondary, so they were added by scribes. Mm. And that we can look at the traditions in the second century and piece together why they ascribed them to those figures, and trace the history and development of that. And I think those Christians in the second century were answering questions in the second century, so they're more helpful for how did they receive the Gospels and maybe not necessarily are they historically accurate to how the Gospels originated. Mm-hmm. So that would be the approach I'd start with. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Now, your statement that the titles, the attributions of authorship seem to be secondary, my understanding is that is primarily based on the fact that our earliest manuscripts where we have attribution of authorship, they're found in different places. They haven't seemed to settle into a specific framework, which is not usually how things are copied when they're part of an original. That's usually how scribes will go about adding information to manuscripts. Is that accurate, or are there other data that influence that conclusion?

Michael Kok I'd have to think about it. I think the main issue is just that the manuscript evidence is late. Okay. So I'm not aware if there's any manuscripts that lack the title. There's an article by Simon Gathercole on the title of the Gospels, which really just compiles all the manuscript evidence, and I think he's put it on his academia.edu page, so- Yeah ... it's really accessible. So you can look at that. So I think the main issue is that the titles are found probably in the late second century. And I know there's some renewed debate about dating some of those manuscripts. I know Brent Nongbri has written some things where you date them later than some would traditionally assign. Mm-hmm. But let me put it this way. I think with the title, "The Gospel According to," it sort of implies that there's more than one Gospel. Mm. Because otherwise, you'd say maybe, "The Gospel of Mark." But because you say, "The Gospel according to Mark," there's knowledge that there's another one according to Matthew. Mm. So my take would be this is probably when the four Gospels had been collected together into an authoritative collection, and you need to differentiate them in some way. So you say this one's according to Matthew, and this one's according to Mark or Luke. And then the manuscript evidence comes after that collection's been formed. Okay. And some of the figures like Irenaeus, who's a bishop in the late second century, he knows those titles, so he's probably inherited Gospel manuscripts with those titles attached, and then everyone defends that collection.

Dan McClellan And my understanding is that Irenaeus is the first to actually attribute the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as we know them. Is that accurate? Yeah.

Michael Kok Well, he's the person that really makes it explicit where let's say he'll quote Mark, and he will ascribe it to a Gospel according to Mark, which helps, right? Before him, so we'll probably dive into these traditions, but we have in the early second century, a bishop named Papias who lives in what's modern-day Turkey in Asia Minor. And he talks about Mark and Matthew and something they wrote, and there's some discussion about what he's referring to. You'll get other early second-century authors who they'll quote things the Lord said or did, but there's debate about are they quoting our Gospels, or are they quoting oral traditions that they know? Because they don't assign them to a named author. Okay. So for instance, I know Ignatius, who's a bishop in Antioch in the early second century. He gives a phrase about how Jesus was baptized to fulfill all righteousness. That seems to be picking up on something the Gospel of Matthew says, because it's Matthew's way of defending the baptism. Mark just tells the baptism of Jesus. Matthew tries to say, when John the Baptist protests about, "I should be baptized by you and not you by me." Jesus tells him, "This is done to fulfill all righteousness." Mm-hmm. So it looks like Ignatius is picking up on something in Matthew, but he doesn't attribute it to Matthew. He just sort of references it and moves on, right? Or another text called the Didache. It talks about a prayer that's found in a Gospel. It looks like the Lord's Prayer, and it looks like Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer, but he doesn't say the Gospel of Matthew. He knows it's a text called the Gospel. Mm-hmm. Unless he's talking about the oral good news that Jesus preached. So that's the difficulty in the first half of the second century.

Dan McClellan And you have folks like Justin Martyr who are referring to the memoirs of the apostles, just kind of generically. Yeah.

Michael Kok And Justin, I think there's really good evidence that he does know Matthew and Luke when he's quoting the memoirs of the apostles. Mm-hmm. Like he'll cite traditions that are unique to them or traditions where it looks like, again, Matthew and Luke are editing Mark, and Justin knows the editing of that.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Michael Kok Sometimes it seems we don't know everything he cites. Like he talks about a tradition about Jesus being born in a cave. Right. And so do you get that- That's the Protoevangelium ... from the Gospel or another oral tradition? I think he knows Mark as well, because he talks about how Jesus nicknamed James and John the Sons of Thunder, and that's unique to Mark. Some scholars think he knew John as well, but he seems to know John. It's more questionable if he considers it one of the memoirs of the apostles or not. Mm. He knows John's saying about you have to be born again. He connects that with baptism. But when he actually cites the memoirs, there's some debate about is it just the Synoptics and other things, or sorry, is it just Matthew, Mark, and Luke? I've written an article about this, because he does talk about the memoirs of the apostles and those who followed them. Right. And some try to say, well, that's him saying, well, Matthew and John are apostles, and Mark and Luke are their followers, the followers of Peter and Paul. But I think it's more likely he thinks all the Gospels are written jointly by the apostles as a collective group and their followers who maybe were like their scribes or secretaries. So I don't think you can establish he knows the four traditional titles. Mm. I think that you're right that Irenaeus is our earliest evidence, though I think it was in place before Irenaeus, but- Okay. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then Papias is coming, this is around 120, 130 CE, or even later than that?

Michael Kok Some date him then. I actually would date him earlier, around 100 to 110.

Dan McClellan Oh, really? Okay.

Michael Kok The reason is, so Eusebius seems to imply like he's coming about when Ignatius is around, and also I'm trying to remember the Roman bishop, but he seems to put him earlier in the second century. Hmm. Papias seems to be writing before some developments that happened, like he's not refuting Marcion or all these various other Christian teachers that were developing ideas like Marcion or Valentinus or- Right ... Basilides. The reason he gets dated to as late as you do, there is these fragments that seem to suggest that he mentioned resurrected saints to the time of Hadrian- Mm-hmm ... who are alive. But it seems like the fragments aren't actually... It comes from a later summary of Eusebius' history in the fourth century. Mm. And they weren't actually quoting Papias. He was quoting someone else named Quadratus. Okay. So I think the best evidence is Papias is probably early second century, and I think that might be a majority view among a lot of people. So there's William Schoedel, who's written some things about this. Aric Ortner, Robert Gundry. Those are some names that I can think of. Okay.

Dan McClellan Now, Papias has, as you mentioned before, the references to what may be the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew, but they don't fit as conveniently as many people would like into what we understand today about Mark and Matthew. Could you briefly talk about what Papias seems to be talking about and the relationship you think that might have to the gospels as we understand them? Yeah.

Michael Kok So what Papias tells us is he has a tradition that he says is from the elder. He has a prologue where he wants to learn things from a true and living voice. So he's asking who he calls the elders what the disciples of the Lord said. And he names a bunch of disciples like Peter, James. So what they said, and then he names what John the Elder and Aristion were saying. So it's a really convoluted prologue where it's like, are the elders the same group as the disciples, or two separate groups? Are the elders passing along the words of the disciples? Is this elder John a separate figure from the John the disciple who had... So John said things, the elder John is saying things, which seems to imply that the elder's alive while the other John's passed away, maybe. Right.

Dan McClellan Because I've heard that argument a bunch, that this is the beloved disciple who's reporting things to Papias, but that's an assumption that some folks make.

Michael Kok Yeah, and I don't go there myself. I think the elder John, mostly you could say someone in Asia Minor, who was some figure that Papias consulted, and that he eventually gets confused with the Apostle John. Mm-hmm. So in the late second century, Irenaeus just says Papias is a hearer of John, and he seems to imply it's, he calls him John the disciple of the Lord, but I think he means the Apostle. Mm. Okay. While Eusebius, who's quoting Papias. So Papias' books haven't survived. We actually only hear quotes from him, and Eusebius is the one who's recording these quotes in the fourth century. He reads the prologue and thinks, "No, Papias is talking about two different, there's an Apostle John and the elder John." Okay. But anyways, the elder John has this tradition that Mark was the interpreter of Peter, which probably means his translator. That Peter was preaching as the needs demanded from his audience, and that Mark wrote it down. But then he makes a statement that Mark wrote it down not in order. And he says, "These are the things the Lord said and did." So Peter's recalling anecdotes about things Jesus had did, and Papias wrote down, but he didn't get the order right because he's a follower of Peter. And then Papias goes on to say Matthew wrote down what he calls the oracles in the Hebrew language, and everyone interprets, or I'd say translates them as best they can. So that's what he gives us. Mm-hmm. The reason there's debate is, so Papias calls Mark an account of the things the Lord said and did, but he also calls it an account of the oracles of the Lord. And then he calls Matthew- And this is logia ... oracles, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah, this is logia in Greek, right?

Michael Kok That's right.

Dan McClellan So the sayings. Yeah.

Michael Kok Well, it'd be interesting, what are these sayings? So are these oracles said by Jesus? Which would make it like, I think in the past video you did a sayings collection of things Jesus said. Or are they oracles about Jesus? When you call it oracles of the Lord, it's a bit ambiguous about- So we're back to the- ... if you subject sagen them or the person being said about. Yeah.

Dan McClellan The subjective or objective genitive, that old can of- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Beecher That'll trip you up every time. That'll get you every time.

Michael Kok Taking Greek and Hebrew is what helped me learn grammar rules, so Yeah. That's why I was good with the languages. So I take it that they're the oracles about the Lord. Okay. Steven Carlson wrote a big book on Papias where he thinks it's a collection of prophecies about Jesus. But I think, and some other scholars would back me up, would say it's oral traditions about Jesus. So things people spoke, but about the things that Jesus said and did. So that's how I would... So I do think Papias is referring to narrative gospels that consist of things Jesus said and did, and it was the oracles describing these things. So an analogy would be in 1 Peter, he talks about those who speak the oracles of God. He's talking about the gifts that people are giving. So, yeah, there are preachers talking about Jesus. Mm. And so according to the tradition, Peter is talking about Jesus, and Mark's writing it down, and Matthew's talking about Jesus, and other people are translating it. That's how I would understand what Papias is saying. I get where it's not a slam dunk, though, because it would've helped if Papias quoted one of the gospels. So if he was like, "Mark's the interpreter of Peter, and he wrote the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," then you could say- Right ... "Oh, that's the first verse of Mark, and he's talking about Mark." So We don't have Papias' works. We just have these fragmentary traditions that he set. Yeah. So there is going to be debate. I tend to think he is talking about Mark and Matthew, and maybe we could talk about the reasons why or why not, but...

Dan McClellan I would love to hear the reasons why or why not. And I also think I seem to recall a recent blog post of yours where you talked about the idea of, I don't remember the exact language you used, but not necessarily versions, but that things were being edited, that they were being maybe disseminated, and then more editing was going on afterwards. I'd be interested to hear about- Right ... both why you think those are references to what we have today, or/and the relationship of this process of editing to that. Yeah.

Michael Kok Well, let me do the first question. So, when Papias says not in order with Mark, there's some debate about whether he means chronological order, like that, "Oh, Mark was not an eyewitness of Jesus. He was depending on the things Peter preached, that Peter was giving sermons on different times, and Mark just wrote it down and couldn't get the what happened when right." But there's another, some scholars will say, no, it means more like rhetorical order. Mm. That if you look at Gospel of Mark, sometimes it looks like stories are put together very loosely. It's like, "And immediately Jesus went out to the synagogue and did this miracle. On the Sabbath, he was going along the grain fields." So the connections aren't ... It's not a very structured narrative. Mm. And sometimes things are arranged topically where it's like, "Oh, put the parables in chapter four, and put some religious controversies in chapter two to three." The one exception is when you get to Jesus, what's called The Passion, the account of Jesus suffering when he goes to Jerusalem, and he teaches in the temple and gets arrested and executed and rises again. That's a very close narrative. So that's why there's some debate about whether that was originally a connected story, when Christians were like, "We have to tell this story about why this happened to Jesus." They came up with this narrative of his Passion, and then they had other independent stories about, "He told this parable one day, and he did this miracle one day," and Mark's just putting things together. But someone like the elder John says, "Oh, I don't like the arrangement of this." Or the other thing is, I think it looks incomplete. Mark just starts, Jesus is baptized. Here's some prophecies about Jesus, and then he's at John the Baptist. And the way Mark ends, the tomb is empty. The young man dressed in white said he's risen, and he's going to Galilee, tell Peter and the disciples. The women don't say anything, and it ends. So you can think of an ancient reader saying, "This looks incomplete and not well organized." And then they turn to Matthew's Gospel, and they say, Matthew starts out with the birth story. You have Jesus' genealogy. You have his virgin birth. So what you get the Christmas stories. It has five discourses of Jesus' teachings. They're well organized, most famously the Sermon on the Mount, which you'd see in any Jesus movie where Jesus is preaching on a mountain. It ends with the resurrection, and Jesus is on a mountain giving the great commission to his disciples to make disciples of all nations. So it seems it's complete. It's well organized. So I think Papias is comparing these two gospels. Mm. So that would be my case. I would say in the early reception of these gospels, that's how they took Papias. So I think when Justin calls them the memoirs of the apostles and their followers, he might be influenced by Papias. Okay. Because Papias is, we have Apostle Peter and Matthew, and we have their followers, Mark and the unnamed translators who help Matthew. One more thing I would say is Mark was really unpopular in the early church. Mm. It's rarely cited. We have fewer manuscripts of it. There's all these, like Papias says it's not in order. Mark gets called, he gets this nickname called Stump Finger, which they try to explain what this means, but I think it might be allusion to it not being complete. Hmm. Or, I think Clement of Alexandria talks about Matthew and Luke, the Gospels of the Genealogies published openly, while Mark wrote some notes from Peter's preaching, and Peter did not officially endorse them. So there's all this ambiguity about Mark in the early church, because I think they saw Matthew and they really liked Matthew has all these teachings of Jesus. It's this complete narrative. While when you have Matthew, you say, "Why have Mark?" Because Mark has over 90% of Mark's content is in Matthew. And then Matthew also has Christmas stories, Easter stories, and all of Jesus' teachings. So I think that's the reason for the preference. So I think without Papias' tradition that Mark was attached to Peter, Mark would not survive. Probably- Interesting ... we'd be reading Matthew and Luke because they took over Mark's contents. Yeah. I think the reason Mark continued to be copied and circulated is because you have this early tradition from Papias linking it with Peter, who's the chief apostle. Okay. That's the case at least I've made. So that's why I think that Papias is talking about those two gospels, but I recognize there's debate on it Interesting.

Dan Beecher I wanted to get into specifically Matthew because your latest book is about the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew. And it starts with this problem of a story of a tax collector that doesn't quite match up between different Gospels. Talk a little bit about that and why the name of the tax collector might have been changed, or what may have happened there. Sure.

Michael Kok So I think when I said the first thesis about Gospels being formally anonymous is that when you read the Gospel of Matthew, no author's introduced. It just starts like, "This is the account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David." So it just jumps into the narrative. It never uses the first person to say, "Here's who I am and how I'm connected to the subject." So it's just internally, it doesn't say anything about the author. Matthew barely appears in the Gospel. He shows up twice. So I think if this was Matthew, you'd probably get more of his recollections about what he himself experienced with Jesus.

Dan Beecher Yeah, because a good percentage of the book, Matthew couldn't have been present for the story that he's telling. Yeah.

Michael Kok Well, at least, especially the narrative of Jesus' death and resurrection, because you know the 12 right away. Right. Or of course, the birth stories. Right. He couldn't be there as well. So yeah, he's introduced in chapter 9, so everything before that. So onto that story about the tax collector. The one incident where Matthew does make a prominent appearance in this Gospel is he's at the toll booth. So it's a toll booth near the village of Capernaum, so people are probably transporting goods from one area to another, and he's collecting tolls on these things. And Jesus sees him and says, "Follow me," and he leaves everything and follows him. The problem is in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, same story, but the toll collector is called Levi. In Mark, he's called Levi, the son of Alphaeus. So it's trying to figure out what's going on here. So in the early church, we have a couple fourth century commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew, and one of the explanations they give is Matthew was so humble, he was willing to use his more known name to confess, "Yeah, I was this bad toll collector, and Jesus called me out of that." While Mark and Luke wanted to protect Matthew's reputation, so they used his less known name, Levi. Okay. It's an interesting way to reconcile all these things. So Richard Bauckham has written a famous book on Jesus and the eyewitnesses, and it's a conservative book that defends a lot of the traditional authorship of the Gospels, but he does research names, and he says it's not very common to have two common Semitic names like Matthew and Levi. Mm. So you have other characters like Paul himself. His Semitic name is Saul, and then he goes by Paul. Or John Mark is another. John's a Semitic name, Mark's a Roman name. Right. So it's very odd to have the same person have two common Semitic names, and there's no indication that Jesus gives him that. You could argue that maybe he was named Levi and Jesus gave him the nickname Matthew. Mm. But there's no story about this. So that's different from you have a apostle named Simon, and according to Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "You'll be called Peter." Right. Which means rock. Right. And the other problem is in none of the lists of the 12 is Matthew ever also be like, "Matthew, also known as Levi." Right? Which would clarify that. Some of the copyists actually added Levi's name into the list of the 12. They gave him the Latin name. So some people didn't, they're like, "Are these two different characters, Levi and Matthew, or what's going on here?" So the way I solve this problem, so I think Mark's the earliest Gospel for a lot of ... It's shorter. The Gospel of Matthew improves its grammar and style. There's all kinds of arguments for Mark being first, and Mark has Levi the toll collector. So Gospel of Matthew repeats the same story, sometimes word for word. It's only in a single verse, but he changes Levi to Matthew. And so scholars debate why did he do this? He does a similar thing where the Gospel of Mark has a woman named Salome at the empty tomb of Jesus, and Matthew, the Gospel writer, it's not Salome, it's the mother of James and John. So he doesn't mind switching one character for another. So just a question of why. So there's different theories about that, that I can go into if you're happy.

Dan Beecher Well, one of the things that's interesting is the idea that the appearance of this character, this now known as Matthew in this toll booth, this tax collector, is that why this book was then attributed to Matthew as a thing? Because it's such a small little moment. Yeah. It's so weird. Yeah.

Michael Kok That's what I suspect, but- So I guess the theories are, if you agree with me that Levi was in Mark and he's been switched out for Matthew. Scholars have asked why. So one theory is, it's such a significant moment of Jesus calling a disciple, and they wanted it to be one of the 12 apostles. Sure. So they picked one at random. So that's one approach. Some people have tried to connect Matthew with, like they've done things with the name Matthew, which is very close to the Greek word for disciple. So they've tried to say, "Oh, he was playing a word game, and that's why he put Matthew, this disciple who's been called." Some people have tried to say, "Well, maybe Matthew was a source for this gospel." So it kind of functions like a footnote, right? "I'm going to put him here so that you know Matthew's a major source." The theory I adopted, I think it's possible maybe Matthew was a toll collector, but people didn't remember his story. So Mark had this story. It's a very simple story of Jesus calling another toll collector named Levi to be his disciple, and the gospel writer said, "That'll fit," right? That, "Let's tell that as Matthew's backstory." So maybe they had some source that said Matthew the toll... So you have all these lists of the 12 apostles, and only in the Gospel of Matthew do you have Matthew's name attached with the toll collector. So could it be- Okay ... they picked up that from a list and then gave the backstory, and they had Mark's gospel. It told this great story about Jesus calling a toll collector, and that was the basis for it. So different theories. Scholars will argue that, but I wonder if Papias sees that detail. He has Mark, sees Matthew here, and says, "Oh, Matthew must be correcting the account to Mark, and that's why." So I wonder if that's connected to that detail, that they noticed that difference. Interesting. Otherwise, I guess you could say, if you don't think Papias was talking about Matthew, so let's say you think Papias was talking about a sayings collection or a collection of scriptural prophecies they attributed to Matthew, then what you could argue is that later in the church, they looked at Papias writing Matthew wrote some oracles, and they looked at the gospel, which singles out Matthew, and they connected the two. So that's, I guess, another approach you could take. Okay. I think it was instrumental in why Matthew got attributed to Matthew.

Dan McClellan Now, what about Papias' claim that this was all written in Hebrew? Is this linked with the fact that Matthew is so concerned for Hebrew Bible prophecy? Does this have something to do with the Gospel to the Hebrews? What are your thoughts on the Hebrew character of Matthew?

Michael Kok I think he's probably just mistaken. I think it's an easy assumption to make that, oh, if it's one of the 12 who wrote this and they're apostles from Galilee, that they would've spoke their native language. He thinks the same about Mark because it's Peter preaching and Mark translating as his interpreter, right? So I think it's a natural assumption, but I think you're right, though, that he notices some of the features of Matthew that it's really linked to the Hebrew Bible. Like it's the gospel that constantly uses this phrase, "This was done to fulfill the prophets," such and such, or really goes out of the way to portray Jesus as like a new Moses giving his law in the Sermon on the Mount. Or it seems to be read to a Jewish audience. So Mark will sometimes explain Jewish customs, and Matthew will delete all the explanations. So it's like it presupposes the audience. So I think those are the two things. Thinking it's by an apostle and noticing that it was probably read to a Jewish audience leads Papias to infer that it was originally written in Hebrew, because all the copies we have of Matthew's in Greek. Yeah. So the reason scholars reject this today is they would say, "Look, our Gospel of Matthew's a Greek text. It seems to copy Mark's gospel, which is a Greek text, and in fact improves the Greek grammar of Mark's gospel." So one example of this, Mark will use the phrase "and immediately" all the time. "And immediately Jesus did this, and immediately he did that." It gets a bit redundant. And so the gospel writer who wrote Matthew, he deletes those references. Or Mark, he will quote Aramaic phrases of Jesus that he kind of transliterates into Greek. Mm-hmm. And Matthew will remove those phrases. So that makes it more likely that this started as a Greek text, and Papias is just wrong about that. Yeah. The only other option, like I said, you could do the other scenario where Papias is referring to something else. Like, oh, if it's a lost sayings collection, maybe it originated in Hebrew, right? But at least, I don't know what your audience thinks about the scholarship about Q. There's this idea that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke copied Mark's narrative, but Matthew and Luke share all these sayings in common and a few stories that are not found in Mark. So the idea is that, oh, they must have got a lost source- Mm ... that's primarily Jesus' sayings. But even that lost source at least looks like it's a Greek source if it existed, right? Because Matthew and Luke, some of the sayings are word for word in Greek. Yeah. Which it's unlikely they had a Hebrew document and they're translating it in identical... So the most you could say is maybe some of the traditions were in Hebrew or Aramaic, right? Yeah. Or say they grabbed a bunch of different sources for that material. May I comment on your last point, Gospel of Hebrews? We have these Jewish Gospels that we don't have, that various church leaders will say, "This is what's said in the Gospel according to the Hebrews." Mm. So we find some Christian leaders in Alexandria and Egypt in the third and fourth century quoting this work, and then we have a couple of fourth century people who seem to cite this work, like a guy named Jerome. But- A guy named Jerome. Far out.

Dan McClellan Responsible for the Vulgate. Yeah.

Michael Kok Also, he knew his languages. Yeah. He learned Hebrew in the desert or something like that. So he's quoting this work, but he's attributing it to Matthew now. Mm. But that's the fourth century. So what I think happened is you have this anonymous Gospel according to Hebrews, Jerome's connecting it with the tradition that Papias wrote something in Hebrew, Matthew wrote something in Hebrew, and he's saying, "Oh, must be that gospel." Okay. So I think that's what happened. There's one more complication, is there might have been another Greek gospel that gets misidentified with the Gospel according to Hebrews. I just wrote a journal article. Sometimes scholars call it the Gospel of the Ebionites. Mm-hmm. But it's quoted by another fourth century leader named Epiphanius, but it seems to be harmonizing our Greek gospels, so that wouldn't be Matthew's Hebrew work. So I think these later Jewish Gospels had nothing to do with Matthew. They get attributed to Matthew because Papias has this tradition that Matthew wrote something in Hebrew, and early church leaders are looking for what fits that.

Dan McClellan So that would seem to support the notion that Papias' attribution of Mark's Gospel to the testimony of Peter was influential, given that this apparent just kind of one-off reference to Matthew being written in Hebrew sounds like it sent ripples throughout early Christianity, that there was an awful lot that was influenced by that- Yeah ... by that testimony, even though we don't know exactly what he had in his head.

Michael Kok Yeah, I think Papias was influential over what you said about Mark and Matthew. So if we go through the history, I don't think Papias won right away, because like I said, there's Ignatius and the Didache, and other first half and second century. They're still referencing the Gospels anonymously. Mm-hmm. Right? Papias doesn't say anything about Luke from what survives. We have another church leader, someone who's rejected, named Marcion. He gets accused of editing and mutilating Luke's Gospel. But we have one church leader say Marcion attached no name to his gospel. So if he had a version of Luke, he didn't call it the Gospel according to Luke.

Dan McClellan Oh, interesting.

Michael Kok So Papias, the name traditions took time for him to influence. I think he has influenced Justin when he talks about the memoirs of apostles. One clue about this is Justin seems to refer to the memoirs of him, and it seems to be the memoirs of Peter. And then he does cite Mark's Gospel. Or he doesn't quote it, but he alludes to the tradition of Jesus giving James and John the nickname Sons of Thunder. Yeah. And that's only found in Mark. Right. And it's found in a line where he seems to suggest he's calling it the memoirs of Peter. So that would be Papias. Yeah. And then when you get to Irenaeus at the end of the second century, you have him citing Matthew writes to the Hebrews in their own language. So that looks like Papias. Mm-hmm. Mark's the interpreter of Peter, who wrote down after Peter's death. Papias doesn't say anything about Peter's death, so that's Irenaeus building on the tradition. Mm. But still Papias at the bottom of it, right? Mm-hmm. He also adds a note about Matthew writing while Peter and Paul were in Rome, and Mark writing after Peter's, he technically says departure, but probably a euphemism for his death. Right. But then Irenaeus adds in traditions about Luke and John. So I don't think those go back to Papias, but I think they were developed before Irenaeus. Yeah. And we can look at why.

Dan McClellan Now, the references, you mentioned that there were some criticisms of Marcion saying he's butchering the Gospel of Luke. These are coming after Marcion's death, right? These are coming late second century? Yeah. Okay. So what are your thoughts on the idea that Luke is second century, and that maybe Marcion had a version of Luke that maybe didn't have the nativity account, and that was added on later? I'm hearing that these theories are out there in circulation. I'm just curious your thoughts on those theories. Yeah.

Michael Kok I'm not sure yet. So I have dated Luke to the early second century. Okay. So I guess part of the thing with dating the Gospels is when are the earliest references to them? Mm-hmm. So if you presuppose that Matthew copied Mark, so Matthew, in my view, seems to be referenced by texts like the Didache, Ignatius, and Papias, who are probably, I know there's a debate about Ignatius being later, but let's just guess early, at least for Didache and Papias, let's just say early second century. Yeah. 100 to 110, somewhere around there. Yeah. So that puts limit. So you say, "Oh, Matthew dates earlier, and then Mark dates earlier than that." Mm-hmm. The other clue about dating those gospels is that they seem to imply that this generation, a bunch of things will happen up to the destruction of the temple, and then the Son of Man will soon come back, and some won't taste death before they see that happening, which suggests maybe they're expecting it within that timeframe, right? Mm-hmm. Luke doesn't, in my mind, seem to be referenced as early. And Luke inserts things like he has a longer time where he's like, "There's going to be this time where the nations are going to trample Jerusalem." So it seems to be like he's allowing for a longer timeframe, so he could be dated a bit later. Mark tells us that there's going to be this abomination that's going to desecrate the temple, and then Luke comes around and says, "That's when the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem." So it seems to suggest that he knows the temple was destroyed in 70. And he's not quoted early. I think him and Papias share a lot of similar traditions. Mm-hmm. So I think some of this evidence points to him being in the early second century. Okay. There's talk about Luke. He quotes some things that the Jewish historian Josephus quotes. So both Luke and Josephus talk about these various rebel leaders. Mm-hmm. So there's one Theudas, and Judas the Galilean, and Josephus narrates these two rebels in the wrong order, and Luke has the same wrong order. So it's like that might be a clue that Luke knows Josephus, and Josephus wrote his history at the end of the first century. Right. So these are the arguments. Okay. The Marcion thing I'm just not sure about yet. So Justin refers to Marcion's views but doesn't talk about his gospel. So it's Irenaeus and later that they're talking about Marcion's gospel, and they're all claiming he edited Luke. Right? So they're all associating he had some version of Luke, and their view is that he tampered with it. Right? So, I think like what you noted, they note that Marcion's gospel doesn't have a birth narrative. So I think it starts with Jesus coming into the village of Capernaum. So they're like, "Oh, Marcion cut out the birth narrative because he didn't even believe Jesus was fully human." Right. "And therefore, he didn't want him to be born." Right? So I think that's Tertullian that tells us that. Tertullian's this early third-century writer, but now scholars are kind of reopening that question, and they're saying, "Well, maybe there was a version of Luke that Marcion just inherited," and that, so maybe he still edited it some, but he wasn't wildly cutting out things. Right. Because one of the problems with him editing is, so for instance, Marcion, his theology was he wanted to say the God of the Hebrew Bible was a separate, lower creator, and he was not the supreme deity who is the father of Jesus, who sent Jesus to deliver us from the God of the Hebrew Bible. Right. But Marcion leaves a lot of stuff that's tied in with the Jewish scriptures in Luke's gospel. So if he wanted to edit it, he didn't do a very good job editing Luke according to his own theology. Yeah. So that's why some scholars are saying, "Well, maybe Marcion just inherited a different version of Luke- Yeah ... than what we have come to know as Luke-Acts." I don't know if I'm yet comfortable with dating Luke-Acts after Marcion, but it is an option. I think it's in the second century, right? I date it a bit earlier than Marcion. Mm-hmm. The tradition is he seems to be kicked out of the church around 144, or disfellowshipped from some Roman Christians around 144. And some say he was ministering earlier, but how much earlier, and can we date Luke-Acts that late? I don't know. Maybe with Luke-Acts, Marcion has a version of Luke, but he doesn't have Acts. Mm. Now, if he had an earlier version of Luke, the final form of Luke, it looks like it's connected with Acts because the Gospel of Luke, right before the birth story, it opens with a prologue- Right ... where he addresses someone named Theophilus, who may be this wealthy patron who's sponsoring the publication of the work. And then the Book of Acts starts with, "In my last book, Theophilus, I said this," and now I'm going to keep telling the story, right? Right. So it's interesting that Marcion only has a version of Luke but not Luke-Acts. Now, the reason why that's important to authorship is the reason why the Gospel of Luke gets attributed to Luke is because of the Book of Acts. Mm. Because the Book of Acts has these select moments where the narrator is usually telling the story about the spread of the good news from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. And the narrator's sometimes talking about Paul and how Paul spread the message, but he's traveling with Paul, and then all of a sudden he'll say, "And we went there." So this first person will show up. So someone like Irenaeus, he sees the we in Acts and says, "Oh, this must be someone who's associated with Paul. So who could that be?" And then he turns to another letter that Marcion didn't have in his collection because Marcion loved Paul's letters, but he didn't have First Timothy in his... Or no, well, he didn't have First Timothy- He didn't have any of the pastors ... but he did have Second Timothy in his collection. Right. So in Second Timothy, Paul, because the letter is attributed to Paul, at least, he says, "Only Luke is with me." Hmm. Right? So that's the dots that are being connected. There's a we who's with Paul. The we shows up at the end of the Book of Acts in Rome with Paul. Second Timothy is supposed to be sent by Paul in Roman imprisonment, and Luke alone is with him. Mm-hmm. That's why Irenaeus can say, "Oh, it was written by Luke, the companion of Paul."